So speaking, he caught her by the hand. And laughter-loving Aphrodite, with face turned away and lovely eyes downcast, crept to the well-spread couch which was already laid with soft coverings for the hero; and upon it lay skins of bears and deep-roaring lions which he himself had slain in the high mountains. And when they had gone up upon the well-fitted bed, first Anchises took off her bright jewelry of pins and twisted brooches and earrings and necklaces, and loosed her girdle and stripped off her bright garments and laid them down upon a silver-studded seat. Then by the will of the gods and destiny he lay with her, a mortal man with an immortal goddess, not clearly knowing what he did.

But at the time when the herdsmen drive their oxen and hardy sheep back to the fold from the flowery pastures, even then Aphrodite poured soft sleep upon Anchises, but herself put on her rich raiment. And when the bright goddess had fully clothed herself, she stood by the couch, and her head reached to the well-hewn roof-tree; from her cheeks shone unearthly beauty such as belongs to rich-crowned Cytherea. Then she aroused him from sleep and opened her mouth and said:

'Up, son of Dardanus! -- why sleep you so heavily? -- and consider whether I look as I did when first you saw me with your eyes.'

So she spake. And he awoke in a moment and obeyed her. But when he saw the neck and lovely eyes of Aphrodite, he was afraid and turned his eyes aside another way, hiding his comely face with his cloak.

9 comments:

Thank you, more than I can say, for placing this hymn and these images here. They restored me (for now at least) to a condition of coolness, happiness and health after a long night lying mostly awake in my own super-humid, super-heated bed chamber, which left me a different kind of wreck. When I came downstairs for coffee, I saw a television commercial for the "Sobakawa memory foam cloud pillow", which placed great emphasis on the fact that my head weighs ten pounds and is capable of crushing ordinary pillows (the point being that this is harmful to sleep and health). I think I'm going to read this again. I really love the Niles translation.

Ah, how nice to find all this here, still sitting in bed looking out now into the fog, birds awake and calling -- Aphrodite on the swan, John ("Jack" when I knew him back there in the Berkeley days) Nile's beautiful rendering of Homer's Hymn, then Homer's Hymn in original Greek (!), then the Loeb translation and, at last (and not least!), that blue blue blue of the Aegean at Cythera . . . .

The attack of the two hundred pound head upon the worried innocent pillow I currently perceive to be chief among the several banes of anciency.

(Watch out for heavier heads ahead.)

"Sobakawa memory foam cloud pillow" however sounds to me as though it might even make matters worse, if such a thing were possible.

Ed,

Por supuesto.

Steve,

Amazing, small world. This translation is so good, and such a beautiful example of how the spirit of Ezra Pound's Poetics wedded with the spirit of the later 1960s to produce...what can we call it? a momentary mini-Aeneas?

Yes, you're right -- in this "amazing small world . . . the spirit of Ezra Pound's is [WAS] wedded with the spirit of the later 1960s". . . . I first met Jack Niles in a translation class taught by Peter Whigham, an English man who'd been Pound's secretary in Italy at some (recent?) point -- and had translated the then new Penguin edition of Catullus -- very beautiful indeed (and itself infused w/ such poetics). . . .

Thanks very much for account of Rudd Fleming (and link to Carlo Parcelli's great piece, w/ line about then going out to get tear-gassed -- takes me back to those good old days in Berkeley, walking across the campus (maybe after Peter Whigham's translation class?), the helicopter swooping down above the Campanile with its trail of tear-gas). . . .